February 25, 2004: Find Stores! Find Opponents!

Our Store Finder and Gamer Finder have been heavily revamped. In particular, the Store Finder has been completely recoded AND given a new database. We used to use the database supplied by GAMA, but it had gone so long without updating that we gave up. Now we're maintaining our own.

If you're a gamer, please check listings for your area and see if any of your Friendly Local Game Stores are missing. If they are, please let them know they have the chance to sign up! (Please do NOT try to sign up on behalf of a store if you don't own it or work there. The store should decide whether it wants to be listed or not.)

The cool feature of both Finders is this: the databases CAN'T get too out of date, because every six months, the system sends a query to everyone listed, asking for a confirmation and update. If there's no confirmation, the listing is dropped. So, in theory, there will be no accumulated cruft of out-of-business stores and vanished opponents.

Hope you like it. We do. All thanks to Susan Rati Lane, who coded the new version for us!-- Steve Jackson